Remarks on the decision “Obligation to digitize to report information and accounts” – Patent

If a patent holder wishes to claim damages from an infringer, he bears the burden of proof of the facts justifying the amount to be claimed. Furthermore, he has a legitimate interest in knowing the supply chain of infringing goods both upstream and downstream of a particular infringer. However, unlike the United States, the German legal system does not provide for any court-supervised fact-finding procedures such as discovery. Instead, the patent owner has a demand for chain of delivery information and accountability for acts of patent infringement. This claim is usually asserted in a first round of infringement litigation, accompanied by a request for an injunction.

The Munich District Court (“Landgericht München I”) has now decided that the data due must also be provided to the patentee in a machine-readable format, even if the infringer only has this data on paper. The counterfeiter must therefore make them readable by computer. Moritz Meckel, partner of Finnegan, summarizes the court decision of November 12, 2021, file ref. 21 O 10885/16.

Read “Remarks on the decision ‘Obligation to digitize to report information and accounts'”, GRUR-Prax 2022, 385.

Originally posted by GRUR Prax.

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